Laelius on Friendship (45-48)

I say this because certain men who, I am informed, are considered sages in Greece, have approved certain views, which, in my opinion, are astonishing (but there is nothing that those men will not pursue with their subtleties). Some of these men teach that too much intimacy in friendships should be avoided, lest it be necessary for one man to be full of anxiety for many; that each one of us has business of his own, enough and to spare; that it is annoying to be too much involved in the affairs of other people; that it is best to hold the reins of friendship as loosely as possible, so that we may either draw them up or slacken them at will; for, they say, an essential of a happy life is freedom from care, and this the soul cannot enjoy if one man is, as it were, in travail for many.

Again, there are others, I am told, who, with even less of human feeling, maintain (and I briefly touched on this point just now) that friendships must be sought for the sake of the defence and aid they give and not out of goodwill and affection; therefore, that those least endowed with firmness of character and strength of body have the greatest longing for friendship; and consequently, that helpless women, more than men, seek its shelter, the poor more than the rich, and the unfortunate more than those who are accounted fortunate.

O noble philosophy! Why, they seem to take the sun out of the universe when they deprive life of friendship, than which we have from the immortal gods no better, no more delightful boon. For of what value is their vaunted freedom from care? In appearance it is indeed an alluring thing, but in reality often to be shunned. For it is inconsistent not to undertake any honourable business or course of conduct, or to lay it aside when undertaken, in order to avoid anxiety. Nay, if we continually flee from trouble, we must also flee from Virtue, who necessarily meets with some trouble in rejecting and loathing things contrary to herself, as when kindness rejects ill-will, temperance lust, and bravery cowardice. And so you may see that it is the just who are most pained at injustice, the brave at cowardice, the self-restrained at profligacy. It is, therefore, characteristic of the well-ordered mind both to rejoice at good deeds and to be pained at the reverse.

Wherefore, if distress of mind befalls a wise man (as it certainly does unless we assume that human sympathy has been rooted out of his heart), why should we remove friendship entirely from our lives in order that we may suffer no worries on its account? For when the soul is deprived of emotion, what difference is there—I do not say between man and the beasts of the field, but between man and a stock or a stone, or any such thing? Nor are we to listen to those men[*]who maintain that virtue is hard and unyielding and is, as it were, something made of iron; whereas, in many relations of life, and especially in friendship, it is so pliable and elastic that it expands, so to speak, with a friend’s prosperity and contracts with his adversity. Wherefore, that mental anguish of which I spoke and which often must be felt on a friend’s account, has no more power to banish friendship from life than it has to cause us to reject virtue because virtue entails certain cares and annoyances.

But, since, as I said before, virtue knits friendship together, if there should be some exhibition of shining virtue to which a kindred spirit may attach and adjust itself, then, when that happens, love must needs spring forth.